nd, in
the firm conviction that I was an adventurer, they had already, I make
no doubt, buttoned up their pockets, and diligently adjusted their
watch-chains. In a short time, this reserve wore away. From this moment
the conversation became general. Each individual had some invalid story
to relate, and I too, so far forgot my usual taciturnity as to indulge
my hearers with a detail of my late indisposition--of its origin in the
Mysterious Tailor--of the wretch's inconceivable persecution--of the
fiendish peculiarities of his appearance--of his astonishing ubiquity,
and lastly, of my conviction that he was either more or less than man.
Scarcely had the very uncourteous laughter that accompanied this
narrative concluded, when a low, intermittent snore, proceeding from a
person close at my elbow, challenged my most serious notice. The sound
was peculiar--original--unearthly--and reminded me of the same music
which had so harrowed my nerves at Bologne. Yet it could not surely be
he--he, the very thoughts of whom now sent a thrill through every vein.
Oh, no! it must be some one else--there were other harmonious
sternutators beside him, he could not be the only nasal nightingale in
the three kingdoms. While I thus argued the matter, silently, yet
suspiciously, a wandering gleam of day, streaming in at the coach
windows, faintly lit up a nose the penultimate peculiarities of which
gave a very ominous turn to my reflections. In due time this light
became more vivid; and beneath its encouraging influence, first, a pair
of eyes--then two sallow, juiceless cheeks, then an upper lip, then a
projecting chin; and lastly, the entire figure of the Mysterious Tailor
himself, whose head, it seems, had hitherto been folded, bird-like, upon
his breast, grew into atrocious distinctness, while from the depths of
the creature's throat came forth the strangely-solemn whisper, "touching
that little account." For this once, indignation got the better of
affright. "Go where I will," I exclaimed, passionately interrupting him,
"I find I cannot avoid you, you have a supernatural gift of
omnipresence, but be you fiend or mortal I will now grapple with you;"
and accordingly snatching at that obnoxious feature which, like the tail
of the rattle-snake, had twice warned me of its master's fatal presence,
I grasped it with such zealous good will, that had it been of mortal
manufacture it must assuredly have come off in my hands. Aroused by the
laughter of